They Live

A classic anti-consumerist, super cheesy sci-fi vid from 1988. Shepard Fairey used it as inspiration for his "Obey" poster work. This was a serious banger for skate-punks back in the early 90s. It's very dated now but still worth a look. If anything, the manipulation of our desires has only gotten worse. Takes about a minute and a half to get going, so stay with it.

The reference sleep as a metaphor for sleep walking through life, living on media and virtually existing (like sitting in fron to the TV or computer all day instead of having real experiences of your own. Also, its easier to control people if they are asleep in life most of the time.

The reference sleep as a metaphor for sleep walking through life, living on media and virtually existing (like sitting in fron to the TV or computer all day instead of having real experiences of your own. Also, its easier to control people if they are asleep in life most of the time.

Yeah, and great theme of being ruled my commercialism, and materialism, with false values of beauty, wealth and power. This is not all that dated. It is more relevant today than it was 20 years ago; commercialism and huge corporate influence is bigger (no pun intended) now than then. Think about the proliferation of big box retailers. We didn't really have Wallyworld so much in the 80's. There were smaller towns and small businesses, and status like NIKE and the complex system of controlling consumers was far less sophisticated than it is now. Think CLEAR CHANNEL on this idea. Monopolies are stronger now than ever before; and we just accept that it is this way. My fear is it will get worse before better; but we might run out of resources with Peak Oil and global warming is going to change things. We are runnig out of time to be ruled by these immature values of consumerism.

Yeah, and great theme of being ruled my commercialism, and materialism, with false values of beauty, wealth and power. This is not all that dated. It is more relevant today than it was 20 years ago; commercialism and huge corporate influence is bigger (no pun intended) now than then. Think about the proliferation of big box retailers. We didn't really have Wallyworld so much in the 80's. There were smaller towns and small businesses, and status like NIKE and the complex system of controlling consumers was far less sophisticated than it is now. Think CLEAR CHANNEL on this idea. Monopolies are stronger now than ever before; and we just accept that it is this way. My fear is it will get worse before better; but we might run out of resources with Peak Oil and global warming is going to change things. We are runnig out of time to be ruled by these immature values of consumerism.